It is exciting to be officially invited back to the Tate Modern where we held an inofficial maggot exhibition and intervention ‘Maggotypes’ fourteen years ago. Back in 2001, the East Room @ the Tate Modern was open to the public and filled with visitors who enjoyed the spectacular view over the Thames. It did not have security personnel or CCTV, so it was the perfect location for Gero Grundmann and myself to exhibit the work of some talented maggot artists in a series of performances.

The audience was allowed to select a maggot-artist who we then interviewed. It answered our questions via ink trail.

As the performance went on, the audiences drew nearer to the table as the maggot turned from disgusting to funny to cute (maybe not cute for everyone but certainly for some).

Afterwards we were asked: “What happens to ‘Bill’ (or Dick, William, Sandra) now? You are not going to kill him, are you?” – Mission accomplished!

The Department of Seaweed entered its third month. I organised a trip to London for a group of design students from the HFBK in Hamburg and we created a room-setting, food and tableware for a kelp evening in the department.

Yesterday I had my first public engagement as Head of the Department of Seaweed at the V&A. I spoke at a Sustain RCA evening entirely dedicated to the potential of Algae:

‘Fuel, food, fertiliser, dyes, cosmetics, colourants – even pollution control are just a few of the many uses of algae. From design and architecture to fishing and pharmaceuticals, this diverse biological substance is promising to rival fossil fuels and kickstart new economies around its growth and production.
Meet our three speakers: scientist, academic and business consultant Brenda Parker; V&A resident product designer Julia Lohmann, and textile-researcher Marin Sawa – all working at the intersection of science, technology, art and design, exploring the amazing potential of this Green Gold.’ (Quote from the Sustain RCA website)

The talks will go online on the Sustain RCA website in the coming weeks and until then you can find out more about the speakers by folowing these links:

http://www.marins.co.uk/ (Designer and researcher Marin Sawa works with living algae and currently experiments with printing algae cells as an artist in residence in the Biochemistry Department at Imperial College, just across the road)

Also if you are more generally interested in algae related information, this is the most comprehensive database there seems to be:

This is day one at the Department of Seaweed at the V&A in London. For the coming six months I will be artist in residence (or, if you will ‘Head of the Department of Seaweed’) at the world’s leading museum of art and design. Together with a group of collaborators from different craft disciplines we are developing materials from kelp and objects from the materials created. This blog will regularly be updated with news from the Department of Seaweed. If you have an interest in kelp, design, craft and/or collaborative artistic practice and happen to be in London in the coming six months come and visit us between 13.00-16.00h on the following days: